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Dollhouse Wiki talk:Community Portal
Category:Community Hello, and welcome to the Dollhouse Wiki! This is the general discussion page for the wiki, so if you're new here, feel free to drop a line and introduce yourself. Also, feel free to visit Dollhouse Wiki:About, or help expanding stubs and create . Wiesengrund 11:29, 28 September 2008 (UTC) Spoiler I was wondering, if we would want to make this wiki a "No Spoiler"-zone. Maybe like the Lostpedia, limiting information on the Wiki to the Dollhouse-episodes that have already aired. Joss Whedon is to my knowledge concerned about spoilers, so it would be in line with his wishes, I guess. Any thoughts on that? --— Wiesengrund (talk) 09:58, 28 January 2009 (UTC) :I think we're dealing with two levels of spoilers: spoilers that shouldn't be posted at all, and spoilers that should be posted under a spoiler warning. Limiting info on the Wiki to already-aired episodes would be the first kind, but issues are starting to crop up around what can we post, but needs to go behind a spoiler warning. --Phantomrhiannon 20:03, 22 March 2009 (UTC) :: I think that if we try to avoid posting spoilers, we won't be posting anything at all. If an episode has aired, I feel pretty strongly that at that point no-one is going to be browsing this wiki unless they expect to see spoilers. Consider an episode summary, for example. Precisely what in the episode isn't a spoiler? There are so many spoilers in the various story arcs that it'll be impossible to write anything without having it inside spoiler tags. :: If the episode hasn't aired yet, of course, I agree that it's a "real" spoiler and should not be included except for the teaser text released by Fox itself. I'd even be willing to wait on episode summaries until after the episode has broadcast in every region in which the show is currently airing. 18:30, 3 May 2009 (UTC) ::: I think after next week everything will be quite simple, since we will be able to write everything from the perspective of a complete first season. We should, however, make that clear on the front page, so that visitors from UK (where Dollhouse premieres in May) know that the Wiki is based on the first season as aired in the US.--— Wiesengrund (talk) 07:57, 4 May 2009 (UTC) ::::I wish to revisit this issue, considering a spoiler warning is on the main page, I have to wonder if it is necessary to continue to post spoiler warnings on each and every single page (or nearly so), as there's typically an understanding that these types of wiki's will contain information on released media (episodes, movies, etc...) that could be considered spoilers if you have not already seen them. --Terran Officer 18:48, November 25, 2009 (UTC) Spoilers, minor character pages I'm trying to decide if the main page should link to Lubov as a character, or Victor. Victor would be more accurate and consistent, but it could spoil a reveal in 1x03. Also, I'm wondering if the minor characters for each episode should just end up on a single page for that episode. Not every named character is going to get a fully detailed page on them… similarly for the imprinted personalities of the Actives. Sometimes we get hints of the backgrounds of the people the imprints were made out of, sometimes not. I'm thinking of pages like "Minor characters in Stage Fright" and "List of Echo's personality imprints," etc. I would agree about the lists for minor characters and personality imprints, or we're going to get a lot of stubs that are never read, and therefore never edited and improved.--Phantomrhiannon 06:48, 1 March 2009 (UTC) :I think you're right about the minor characters. I always thought that I will have the time to dedicate every actor, actress and minor role an own page, but that seems unlikely. :) I would also agree that minor personality imprints should have a list, however, most of the important imprints seemed to have quite a bit of characterization in the show. The named ones (Miss Penn, Jenny, Jordan, Audra, Lubov) all seem to have a (fake) background which is important, while the unnamed ones (Matt's girl, Rambo-Sierra, Jason's girl) should have a list, maybe? --— Wiesengrund (talk) 08:45, 1 March 2009 (UTC) Manual of Style? As the episodes air and this wiki starts to expand significantly, I think a manual of style might be in order. Character entries are currently set up in different formats, entries start off taking about "assignments," although the official show terminology is "engagements," etc. Thoughts? --Phantomrhiannon 19:04, 1 March 2009 (UTC) :Very much agreed. Does anyone have experience in writing something like this? I did some cleaning-up on the assignment/engagement-thing (moved the List, for instance) but there could still be some bits floating around.--— Wiesengrund (talk) 09:17, 2 March 2009 (UTC) ::I definitely have no experience, but a quick browse through the edit history tells me that we don't have an innumerable multitude working on this wiki, so I'd be willing to work on it. Keeping in the wiki spirit, I'd recommend setting up a manual of style page and using the discussion tab to have people report style issues they've found or anticipate happening in the future, and using it as a forum to make our decisions about all those issues. Or if somebody else out there has more experience with this, I'd be willing to help out and learn from a master :-D. --Phantomrhiannon 02:30, 3 March 2009 (UTC) ::Nobody else is beating down the doors for this one - should I just go ahead and get started on this? --Phantomrhiannon 23:34, 10 March 2009 (UTC) :::I'm all for it. :) --— Wiesengrund (talk) 10:50, 11 March 2009 (UTC) :::: The 24 wiki uses a policy that all in-universe articles should be written in the past tense, and all out-of-universe articles written in present. Maybe we could adopt something like that, as well? --[[User:Cubs Fan2007|'Cubs Fan2007']] [[User talk:Cubs Fan2007|(Talk)]] 23:36, 11 March 2009 (UTC) :::::It's been a bit since anyone has posted here, but I feel as if I should comment, especially now that I am an admin of this wiki. Firstly, pages in universe should be written in the past tense for a wide range of reasons, including that an episode air is in a person (or the characters) history (IE, the past), we've seen as far into the future as 2019, and it keeps all of the articles into some sort of standard or style of writing. The in universe (and in some cases real world) articles should also use the terminology as the series/production staff uses them (Active/Doll/Engagement, Etc...). If it helps, we could take an approach similar to Memory Alpha (Although clearly, this will be very different here because we see what the future turns into, but still) in that, someday, somebody in the far future (or maybe not so far per se, but further beyond the latest confirmed dating) will be reading some sort of database wherein we will find this (in universe information at least) database (this wiki pretty much) that was written by some very knowledgeable people. --Terran Officer 18:35, 30 August 2009 (UTC) ::::::We've discussed the verb tense issue here and reached a consensus for the Manual of Style. (Of course it is possible to revisit that decision via a policy change.) --— Wiesengrund (talk) 18:54, 30 August 2009 (UTC) Hmmm....alright, I suppose I can see why it would fit, I'll look all of that over and see if I should just leave it alone or rediscuss it with people. Thanks for the link. --Terran Officer 19:53, 30 August 2009 (UTC) Character Sidebars I've been thinking about the character sidebars, Wiesengrund has made one some time ago, and it's pretty good (and fit's all of the characters), but now I was wondering, do we want some sort of massive template with all sorts of optional fields to fill in for each situation, or do we want different types of those templates for say, an Active, an Actual and an Engagement? This would require some creative thinking and some work due to the very nature of this series (and the fact we've already seen several cases of an active taking the place of an Actual temporarily), but I thought this could allow for certain types of information that'd only be used in certain cases to be displayed. --Terran Officer 18:35, 30 August 2009 (UTC) :Just giving credit where credit is due, the character sidebar was made by Chiidatbe, not by me (and yes, I agree it's pretty good :). I would keep a general character template around for all the characters in the show and I think it makes a lot of sense to have one for the engagements (or, preferably, two: one for the character pages, and one for the episode pages). In that scenario I wouldn't see the need for different templates for Actuals and Actives since Actives and Actuals are easy to differentiate since Actives have an additional engagements template and Actuals don't. Or would that be too confusing? --— Wiesengrund (talk) 18:54, 30 August 2009 (UTC) I'm not certain if I am quite understanding what it is you meant, my only thought was because there could be certain fields that only fit with a certain type of "person" (or personality), but I suppose it'd be easier just to do it all in one giant template to save a headache and confusion (I wasn't really thinking about a list/history of engagements, I guess I am not really able to explain what I mean, or how I am thinking it). I think what i meant is, that certain actives are linked to their active name (Echo, Victor, Sierra, Alpha, Etc...) and their "actual" name (which is linked to a different page). Then you have Whiskey who is in a long term engagement and is more known for her engagement then her name or active (but that is all still separated) see where I am going here? Now that I think of it, I suppose just doing one template works with optional fields. I'll have to try and think things out and see if I can better explain my viewpoint. As for Engagements, I do have a table going that I am trying to figure out and properly edit so engagements can be properly listed, with the table having several optional fields (I need to figure out how to hide the unused fields, that's the tricky part, conventional methods don't seem to work). And oops, I was for some reason thinking you had made the table! D'oh! --Terran Officer 19:52, 30 August 2009 (UTC) Theme Colors I'm working on some theme colors (which you can see in the episode sidebar) through my custom color (only I see it) and the episode sidebar (which everyone can see). The core issue at hand is, the initial test I did for the sidebar, I thought look decent, for the sidebar but testing it on the page (the lighter brown) didn't look so good, so I went a darker shade (and thus did so on the sidebar to) and think it looks decent. This could take some time, because I wanted a couple different "levels" in the colors, as you can see in the sidebar, I wanted a darker background, a lighter header, and then a lighter (or the lightest in the shades) content area (where people read stuff). I switched the intended colors (as they worked on the sidebar) for the header and the content area, to see how it is. I...may have to change/reverse things and start from scratch, through. --Terran Officer 21:47, 30 August 2009 (UTC) Update: To help out, here is how I see the Vows page, as it currently exist with my custom colors and template update. Please note, that I use Monobook, and have the colors from Memory Alpha on the page tabs and the navigation bars, so ignore those. As you can see, in this current state, it's...so, so? The color pattern does match, even if the shades look different on the page and the sidebar. The color on the title of "Vows" (in the sidebar) and "Season..." were initially switched around, but the brighter color as seen on the Vows line, didn't look to good for the page, thus the switch. Any thoughts? Basically, it's the darkest brown in the back (which I am aware causes an issue with the black logo text...URG), then the page/header colors which go into lighter shades. The very background area probably doesn't need to be so dark, I suppose...but I kinda like using different shades for different areas. --Terran Officer 22:29, 30 August 2009 (UTC) :I think it looks really cool the only problem I have with the standard setting of colors (I have no custom colors) is that the violet clicked links get rendered in is kinda hard to read on these shades of brown in the episode template: Link. Is there any way to work around that? --— Wiesengrund (talk) 23:08, 30 August 2009 (UTC) Yes, when the actual development for the wiki's theme takes place, the links or I mean the color of the links can be changed (IE, brightened) through coding. It's also possible (although I don't fully understand the color coding for the links, but I have seen it happen) to give two sets of colors for the links, the lighter blue (for an existing page) and red (or whatever we choose) for a non existing page, which would eliminate some of the issues regarding links, but we'd have to find the colors that meshed well with the shades of brown. I have a few tricks up my sleeve for this sort of thing, but we have to agree on the colors/like them. --Terran Officer 23:17, 30 August 2009 (UTC) :Ah, I see. I definitely like the colors in the episode template now, if we can find suitable link colors. Is it possible to change the link-colors to fit the theme but keep having four different links-colors alive (external link, internal existent-but-non-clicked, internal existent-and-clicked and internal non-existent)? --— Wiesengrund (talk) 23:21, 30 August 2009 (UTC) We can try, if you really want the different types of colors, I've seen several different wiki's change the colors (Battlestar Wiki for instance, uses yellow). We could probably make some sort of shade of red/orange for the inactive (or not existing), and a shade of...whatever, maybe skyblue or something like that for the active (IE existing) page, and deepen that color for the existing but visited color. --Terran Officer 23:29, 30 August 2009 (UTC) :Ah, yes that sounds awesome, red/orange and skyblue. External should then probably be a lighter blue than the skyblue for existing internal-unvisited? --— Wiesengrund (talk) 13:07, 31 August 2009 (UTC) Episode Sourcing/Citation I was thinking, a lot of other wiki's that are based on television series and the like, then to source/cite the episode (by way of linking) within the article/section so someone knows where the information in question came from. Do we want to work on a system like this, I personally think we could use it, rather I mean to develop some sort of standardized system. I have a few ideas in mind, but wanted to see what the others thought first. --Terran Officer 19:48, December 2, 2009 (UTC) :For in-world references that would be awesome, sure.--— Wiesengrund (talk) 19:49, December 2, 2009 (UTC) Great, do you have any thoughts at all? I've been thinking over a couple of ideas to try and determine what would be the best to do, and the easiest for the community as a whole. With that said, probably a system similar to Memory Alpha would be best, but that may entail moving all of the episodes to a "Title (episode)" disimig similar to a few episodes (and from what I notice, a few others should anyway) doing so already. Some of the redirects would probably be keepable, but might not be necessary considering we link episodes on the front page (we might want to develop a new panel to list the episodes when everything's said and done? Don't know). The exact approach and style, however is open for debate on what people think is best. --Terran Officer 20:31, December 2, 2009 (UTC) ::The Terminator wiki had a pretty cool system for The Sarah Connor Chronicles. They just used a "numbered template" (eg template: 201 for the 1st episode of season 2, "Samson and Delilah".) Alternatively, you could visit this page and create a page with standardized references for each episode, then add them to the articles, like what they did on the StarCraft Wiki. The latter is more difficult for new users (even though it just involves copy-and-paste), but depending on your attitude on canon, may be a better fit. PSH aka Kimera 757 (talk) 01:05, December 3, 2009 (UTC) Something along the lines of the numbered template is somewhat what I was thinking about doing, but I want to keep things as simple as possible for contributors, old and new alike. The system on the Starcraft wiki seems pretty cool, and goes along with how the real world articles are cited/sourced, but I am not certain if it's feasible to use because like you mentioned, it could be somewhat difficult (I must be honest, I am not sure I completely grasp how that system works...and I can usually catch things). The Memory Alpha system basically allows users to write an episode title inside a template code, and it's then automatically turned into a link and possibly even multiple links with far, far less typing and wikifying the text. I probably would somewhat adapt this for episode numbers if we didn't use titles, but episode titles would most likely be the easiest thing. The number system can be adjusted to work in several different ways though, so that's still a possibility. --Terran Officer 02:32, December 3, 2009 (UTC) :While I am a fan of using the numbers dealing with shows with a huge number of episodes (for instance, Buffy), I think smaller shows like Dollhouse have no need to clunk up references with numbers. There's just 26 episodes of Dollhouse, and only two seasons, meaning that the narrative space of the show is much smaller and not so spread out like on other, big genre-franchise. (And sometimes even such big genre-franchise like Memory Alpha with their huge corpus of episodes don't use numbers in the links itself.) I would stick to the episode names for a small template, and include the "2x02"-designations (or however we may choose to define them... I'm a fan of the "x" ... :) in the tooltip of the link, like Memory Alpha does. So, even if the name doesn't ring a bell for the reader, he/she can easily contextualize the information without having to actually click on the link and read a new article. :As for a possible structure of the template without actually having to use the episode numbers in front of each link, we could divide the 26 episodes into two templates a la Memory Alpha, say and , which could yield something like: (Season 1: "Man on the Street", "Omega") and (Season 2: "Vows", "Instinct", "Belonging") A con to that technique is that it would probably lead to some occurrences where somehting could be referenced in episodes of S1 and S2, and that would leave an unholy mess. Maybe we can make a template that intelligently decides, which Season the eps are from and constructs the citation accordingly? With references like above for easy, not season-transcending references and maybe something like (Season 1: "Man on the Street"; Season 2: "Vows", "Instinct") as the result of ? That would probably be the easiest way for contributors, but how easy would it be to write the template? --— Wiesengrund (talk) 06:57, December 3, 2009 (UTC) I don't even...know the references stuff, but I could probably figure something out, I often consider the Memory Alpha template due to the rather simplistic nature (simplistic that is, if you understand wiki coding and formatting), I could somehow try to combine elements of their episode links and their film links, but I don't know if that can work or be so easy. For the episode link version, I could probably somehow do it like they do and a tool tip shows the season and episode number, that takes some work (and possibly extra pages added to the project), but it is doable. As for your season idea, which is extremely similar to how they do it, basically for multi seasons references, one would simply do ; ) which would result in (Season 1: "Man on the Street"; "Omega"; Season 2: "Vows", "Instinct"), as that's how MA does multi series references (My suggestion: cut down "Season 1" to "S1"). which is along the lines of something easier to do, and at some point I could probably make tool tips to work on that.... if we still wanted episode and season tool tips. One would have to write it in a certain order I think...or not... I'm not certain how I could develop something along those lines out of your second example though, the epref one, but MA has an interesting film link template, wherein ( ) brings up ("Star Trek: The Motion Picture"), however that would require a lot more involvement and knowledge of episode numbers to use that system. I need time to think things over and play with some code, which isn't happening until I get some rest ><, Is there anythoughts from what I said, does it make sense at all? --Terran Officer 07:23, December 3, 2009 (UTC) :I'm right now tinkering with Template:Linktip and Template:E. It actually isn't that difficult to have nice Linktips (all we have to do is populate Template:Titles with Linktips for each episode, which is doable), but I'm still trying to figure out how to get the E-template to produce an episode-reference properly. Right now produces , with correct link and linktext, but with Ghost as linktip, instead of 1x01 "Ghost" (like specified in Template:Titles/Ghost). Hm, still trying to figure that out, but when we get Template:E working, we have the tools to build a nice Template:Epref or something, where multiple episodes, across seasons, can be referenced. But first I'll try to fix the E-problem.--— Wiesengrund (talk) 08:48, December 3, 2009 (UTC) I see what your trying to do, it's pretty much like Memory Alpha, your not going to get the Epref thing to pull out as you want, I think. I am not to sure, though. Anyways, with the link tips working properly, that is when it gets fixed it's easy to just enter the episode titles and when you hover over it, you will get the episode number and the title. I was going to try and find a...less messy system, but it works if everyone wants it. --Terran Officer 19:01, December 3, 2009 (UTC) --Edit-- By the way, I will take a look at this and work out the bugs, but it should be warned that we are going to have a problem, with the episodes that go "Title (episode)" depending on how you want things to look on the link. I can fix that, but we will have to move all episodes to "title (episode)" like Memory Alpha did. --Terran Officer 19:03, December 3, 2009 (UTC) --Another Edit-- OK, I was able to fix this, and it's pretty much exactly like Memory Alpha does it, except for the "(episode)" disimbig, which I think we're gonna have to do (This wiki needs to have a through clean up anyways), because they ran into a problem some time ago where to set up a code for some episodes to have that disimbig, the wanted pages became cluttered up with blank links that had "Episodetitle (episode)" being requested. Unless of course, one does not care and the episode sourced can say "Episode title (episode)" in the article, but IMO, that would look messy. Here it is, all done and fix with an example of sourcing to season one ( ). I would go ahead and make a similar template for season two, if this is liked. --Terran Officer 19:58, December 3, 2009 (UTC) :Awesome, that it works! Thanks for doing that! :) I would not, however, user "DS1" or "DS2" I would just use "S1 and "S2". It should be clear for everyone around here, that were talking about Dollhouse. ;) I'm pretty much off to a conference now for the weekend, but next week, I'd like to try to build a Template:Epref thingy that takes care of the (episode) problem (it's really just the one occurence, is it?) and includes multi-season references altogether. Should be doable with some tricky if-requests, and it would be awesome to have one epref-template that takes care of all episode references. --— Wiesengrund (talk) 22:48, December 3, 2009 (UTC) I can change it if no one likes it being DS1 and DS2, I just thought that somewhat looked and sounded better then having just S1 and S2. With that format though, and the link tips, I am confused as to why you still want an epref template, I don't think it's going to work out like you want, but I might not be understanding what it is your trying to do. The idea behind the links and linktips in the style I used, was that people are shown what season it is, and the episode number. For cross seasons, one would basically do this: ( ; ) and then, in link form, you'd get (DS1: "Epitaph One"; DS2: "Epitaph Two: Return") --Terran Officer 23:23, December 3, 2009 (UTC) :It's not a big deal, I just thought DS1 sounded so technical/nerdy, and it was from what I saw never used in fan-discussions about the show. But maybe someone else will chip in to the question... :) As for the epref-template, I imagine a template that does this: :* produces: (S1: , ) :* produces: (S2: , ) - notice "The Attic" linking properly. I fixed it in the E-Template. :* produces: (S1: , ; S2: ) :This would ensure versatility and simple usage, so that the editors wouldn't have to worry about braces and semicolons. The template would take care of that for them. We would need to do some tricky if-expressions, but it would be doable, I guess. You see what I'm trying to do? --— Wiesengrund (talk) 08:56, December 4, 2009 (UTC) Yeah, I think I do, I'm not certain if that's doable or not, or if we'd have needed all of the other templates to have been made prior to making this one. It looks to be like you just want to made something where someone just enters a name and it's in a certain order and a certain format. That's tricky to do, if it can be done at all, but it might be doable. --Terran Officer 15:54, December 4, 2009 (UTC) I went ahead and fixed the Template to S1, and made an identical one called S2. As for your EpRef, if I understand correctly, now that I have had time to thinka about it. you want to somehow create a template that does ( ; ), without users having to type ( ; ) but more like and then get the aforementioned results? --Terran Officer 05:20, December 5, 2009 (UTC) :Exactly! That's the template I'm looking for! :) --— Wiesengrund (talk) 15:10, December 7, 2009 (UTC) Revamp? I hate to start this discussion so soon, but I am wondering what others may think of a revamp for this wiki, now that the series is over, the main page could probably use a revamp in posted content (I don't see needing a trailer for instance). I simply wanted to know what people would think of this, and some ideas on how to update the wiki to reflect the series end (and the fact the "present" is now 2020 for the series) and what kind of writing style change (if anything) should be done, etc... In short this is the area to figure out what kind of changes period (if anything) the community may want to see and where (with in depth discussions probably taking place on the proper pages).--Terran Officer 04:37, January 30, 2010 (UTC)